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The past few weeks have been a whirlwind – as soon as I seem to be back in London and on top of my to-do list I’m heading off somewhere new. Of course, I’m loving every minute but it has certainly been chaotic which is why this particular post ranges from France to Sussex and back to Shoreditch and Trafalgar Square.

Monet’s House at Giverny. Own photograph.

A few days after Berlin Gallery Weekend I was woken up in the very early hours to head over to France for the Bank Holiday weekend. I’ve always wanted to visit Giverny and, as it was only an hour off route (heaven forbid that I could just relax and enjoy French wine and cheese), we programmed the sat-nav and off we went. Entry to Giverny provides access to Monet’s house and garden. This was the second pink house with green shutters in which Monet had lived and the second time his house had been separated from the garden by a road. Colour is everything here – both inside and out. The walls of the house are adorned with works – there are Japanese prints everywhere plus his huge collection of paintings including works by Delacroix, Cézanne and Renoir.

Inside Monet’s House. Own photograph.

Even on an overcast day, the garden cannot help but make you smile with its full-to-the-brim flowerbeds and radiant colours. Monet had started gardening while living at Argenteuil but not on a scale that would suggest the passion he imbued into the gardens at Giverny. His garden was designed with his paintings in mind – he planted what he wanted to paint so, in a sense, he created the scene that resided in his imagination. When Monet arrived at Giverny there were no ponds but it had always been his dream to have them and it is, of course, his water lily ponds and the Japanese bridge that have become synonymous with his name.

The Japanese bridge. Own photograph.

Monet was severely afflicted by cataracts despite two operations towards the end of his life. As his sight worsened, his works turned from fresh, bright colours to a heavier palette, almost certainly as a result of his blurred colour vision. Whether or not his gardens became lost to him is hard to say but what can be certain is that his pronounced choices of colour infused his world with light and life for many years and helped to create some of the scenes we remember him for today.

Monet’s garden. Own photograph.

After settling in at Nogent-Le-Rotrou, it was irresistible to visit the Chateau Saint-Jean as it was only two minutes away. Built around 1020 on the site of an earlier castle, the building has suffered a lot of intervention over the years and much of what remains is of a later period. It is an imposing and impressive fortress perched on a point with a vantage over the entire area. Inside there is a museum dedicated to the history of the town and, strangely enough, a contemporary art gallery with an exhibition of works by Patrick Loste, evoking the often crude portrayals of cave paintings. I can find art anywhere!

Chateau Saint-Jean. Own photograph.

It was a flying visit to France but, on the way back home, there was just time to stop in at the Holy Trinity Abbey in Vendôme enabling me to indulge my love of the Gothic period. The feature of most note has to be the 12th century frescoes that were discovered behind the 14th century chapter house walls. The sections that remain are badly fragmented the sections but have been preserved remarkably well and one scene showing the Miraculous Catch after Christ’s Resurrection is still strikingly clear consider its age.

Holy Trinity Abbey, Vendôme. Own photograph.

Back in the UK, it was time for the opening of the opera season at Glyndebourne, the wonderful opera house in Sussex founded in 1934. As tempted as I am to do so, I will resist touching on the opera but do have to mention their art programme. As many of you will know, I am very into public installations and making the most of outdoor spaces through art. Glyndebourne are very much on the same page and this season is marked by an exhibition of works by Sean Henry who does exactly this, creating monumental works in bronze for the urban landscape. His works capture the mundane, subjects caught in a moment of introspection with which we can identify. Glydnebourne don’t have the strongest selection of his sculptures but they are unavoidable in the picturesque landscape of the house.

Sean Henry, Catafalque, 2003. Own photograph.

Finally, it seemed I was back in London for long enough to get around some exhibitions here. The Catlin Art Prize is a highlight of the calendar and the brilliant eye of the curator means that we can normally expect great things from the nine chosen graduates who have had to produce new work for the exhibition.

The winner Terry Ryu Kim forced the visitor to become part of her installation – manipulating the viewer’s path through architecture and technology. The work explores how structures can exert power, the installation becomes a stage that dictates our actions. It is haunting and beautiful, both intimate and evasive at the same time.

Juno Calypso who won the visitor vote has garnered a lot of attention, using the more traditional medium of photography. Calypso staged scenes in which she performs as a character called Joyce, always obscuring her face and thereby forcing us to focus on other elements of the scene. The narrative of the unsettling seems to be a theme in this year’s award.

All of the finalists deserve mention but I think praise must be given to Nicky Deeley. Of course, performance art is common now but for a young graduate to produce a work of such maturity is impressive. The piece sits deftly on the line between creepy, cute and fascinating. Admittedly I only saw one costume change but the crowds of people gathered around the work certainly suggested everyone was hooked.

Nicky Deeley performingIsland Year. Own photograph.

I can often be hard to please and so regularly gallery spaces rest on their laurels. One may think this is more true of traditional spaces that are guaranteed the crowds come what may. Well, The National Gallery is currently shaking things up. Michael Landy’s Saints Alive is a result of a two year residency with an in-house studio. Many artists in the past have failed this challenge but Landy has risen to it. He wasn’t scared of the esteemed regard in which everyone holds the National Gallery’s collections. Everything that made him seem the most inappropriate person for this position has actually made him the best.

Saints Alive at The National Gallery. Own photograph.

Asked my thoughts on The NG I would normally name it as a place of calm, a space where one can think and admire some of the most wonderful art in London. It was the first gallery I visited as a child and somewhere I still regularly visit. As I approached the Sunley Room I could hear crashes and bangs, normally such noises would have the guards running to find the source of the disturbance. But the disturbance is, in fact, part of the exhibition. Landy has subverted the serenity.

Walking in I was met by Saint Apollonia, a nine-foot sculpture made of fibre glass, recalling a sculpture painted in a Lucas Cranach work. I nervously edged towards the pedal at her feet, balancing precariously on a stiletto and pressing it down. At this point the pliers she was holding smashed persistently into her mouth. There’s a spare head ready for when this one becomes a tad too battered. She is not the only one who is bringing to life the suffering the saints endured.

Saint Apollonia in the Sunley Room. Own photograph.

Landy has been inspired by the stories of the saints – stories which were once known by everybody yet today have fallen into obscurity. Towering over visitors are seven large-scale kinetic sculptures that swivel and turn, evoking the torment of each saint’s life. These sculptures are interactive; there are buttons to press, a handle to crank and foot pedals to push. There are T-shirts to be won and a Saint Francis of Assisi donation box activated by coins.

One of Landy’s kinetic sculptures. Own photograph.

Landy doesn’t intend to cause offence with these sculptures; his research into the works in the collection and his retelling, through these kinetic beasts, of the saints’ stories is remarkable. Each saint has a symbolic attribute that makes him or her instantly recognisable. Landy has transformed the saints from objects of spiritual devotion into artworks, made from pieces of junk that play on his interest in destruction. Landy brings the saints from the walls of the gallery to life. They are fascinating. We want to press the buttons again and again – are they unnerving or are they funny? I don’t think anyone was quite sure. The legends themselves are often ridiculous and Landy has captured this with his own unique magic, comedy and an enticing undertone of the macabre. The awful and gruesome ordeals these saints underwent were meant to show their patience and endurance. As the sculptures break under the strain there is a certain irony here. And don’t think that’s not fully intentional either. Landy’s past works have always been about selflessness, generosity and virtue so he wasn’t actually as far removed from these topics as many thought.

Alongside the sculptures are his drawings and collages made from cut-up reproductions of works in the collection. I’d urge you not to get so distracted by the sculptures that you miss these.

Saint Jerome in action. Own photograph.

As I turned back to take one last look at the exhibition Saint Jerome was still quivering behind me. Legend tells that he used to beat himself with a rock to prevent him from having impure sexual thoughts. But as he stands there quivering you can’t help but wonder what is going on beneath the excessive drapery around his legs. However, before there was a chance to cast any aspersion onto the virtue of the saint, someone else had crept towards the pedal and Saint Jerome had returned to whacking himself.

Although I was excited to be going to Berlin for Gallery Weekend 2013, I have to confess that part of the excitement stemmed from our mode of transport – we were travelling over on a private plane. Spending a short time in a large city especially over a weekend devoted to art, openings and parties there will always be far too much to see.

Off we go… Own photograph.

On Friday morning we made the most of the short-lived sunshine and wandered around galleries – two, in my opinion, deserve particular note. Wentrup Gallery had just opened its doors to Session by Nevin Aladag. The key work for me was a video piece addressing the interplay of instruments with which the artist make sound by using found objects from the environment. The film shows different area of Sharjah, from the industrial district to the desert as well as the heritage areas. Through this diversity, Aladag makes the instruments symbolically traverse different levels, places and hierarchies. The composition of the film is beautifully created allowing a framework for these instruments to move about, as if on journeys of their own volition. The other highlight was Import Projects – a truly fabulous project space in an old building. Its atmosphere is conducive to the kind of great shows that they mount. The current group exhibition, The Possibility of an Island, explores the relationship between the real and the imaginary, utopia and dystopia, selfhood and otherness and centre and periphery.

Session, Wentrup Gallery. Own photograph.

Friday night saw nearly every gallery in Berlin hosting some form of opening. With dinner booked, we had to plan our itinerary with military precision which involved mapping everything out so we could get the order right. Our first stop was at Blain Southern – what a fantastic space! For Gallery Weekend, they were showing a new group of video works by Douglas Gordon, exploring the collision between Europe and the Orient, desire and fear, light and dark, reality and fantasy and life and death. This show remains one of my standout Berlin exhibitions. Screens are dotted around the gallery and we journey through cityscapes in Morocco with Gordon. The majority of the projections shown here are large-scale, inescapable and all-consuming, appealing to our sensory perceptions.

Directly opposite their courtyard was 401 Contemporary. The gallery director was on hand to explain the mechanisms in Thomas Feuerstein’s works but I have to say I’m still slightly confused although I’ll try to retell the complexity at play here. The main work is a process-based sculpture which attempts to give human form to books through biotechnical machines. The work transforms books into sugar through fermentation. Glucose produced from the cellulose of the books functions as fuel which facilitates the growth of invitro cultivated brain cells. Even as I write this, I find myself getting muddled again but here goes – the brain cells in the exhibition are exclusively fed by literature from Hegel but other pieces of literature produce material for sugar glass which has been used to make the sculptures around the room. It wasn’t that the works were particularly invigorating but the process was incredible – even if I may not have fully understood it. We quickly popped downstairs where Mærzgalerie was showing a paintings exhibition by Sebastian Schrader.

Thomas Feuerstein at 401 Contemporary. Own photograph.

We decided to hire a taxi for our mad dash around Berlin and thank heavens we did as I’ve never seen rain start quite as suddenly as Friday’s downpour did. We sped across Berlin where Tanya Leighton was showing an exhibition of Aleksandra Domanović which did little for me although the gallery space itself is intriguing.

Next, Reception Gallery was showing Leigh Ledare’s piece An Invitation. When we arrived the gallery was practically deserted but it is a fascinating exhibition that I hope drew in the visitors over the weekend. For one week in 2011, Ledare was commissioned by a woman, who remains anonymous in the works, to spend time at the home of herself and her husband in order to make a series of erotic photographs in which she featured as the subject. This body of work looks at ideas of anonymity, legality and non-disclosure, raising questions about how we are presented as subjects through compelling textual and social frameworks.

We tried to visit the Duve Gallery but sadly, after we climbed several dodgy looking flights of stairs in very high heels, it hadn’t followed the trend of opening on Friday evening for Gallery Weekend. Instead, we headed to the exhibition of Jodie Carey’s works at Galerie Rolando Anselmi which involved walking through a whole series of industrial looking buildings and climbing another never-ending staircase. The galleries in Berlin certainly are tucked into every conceivable corner of the city. Carey’s works concern themselves with the dynamic between remembering and letting go, creating works that blur the boundaries between documentary-style archiving and poetic narrative. One of the most poignant works was the Elegy series, five prints from original photographic glass plates. Such plates are now extremely rare; these were probably produced in the 1920s. By not cleaning these plates, Carey has kept the original physical defects in her digital prints memorialising the entire history of photographic printing.

The exhibition at Galerie Crone is one of the most aesthetically memorable. The ground floor gallery shows a film, following an S-Bahn that circles Berlin with performers, who appear and disappear, wrestling for a bloody bone. The story plays on the quest for the Holy Grail. This seemed good but not particularly sensational until we headed upstairs to find a sandy beach complete with boulders, stones, bones, animal skulls, painted bricks and branches. In amongst these were frogs in small containers; apparently, they were meant to be hopping around but when we were there, they were doing their very best to bury themselves deep in the soil. The first floor is meant to be the ‘Brain Cave Spaceship’ and the hopping frogs are meant to prompt thoughts about breaking out of the order of things and making transitions from different environments, maybe even different universes. This was another quite confusing exhibition but it did leave food for thought. Plus, there’s the obvious simple excitement of people playing in the sand. Many took off their shoes and socks and ran around – not what you normally expect to see in a gallery.

Galerie Crone’s beach. Own photograph.

Galerie Crone is in a little arts hub in the same courtyard as the popular Alexander Levy who was showing works by Julius von Bismarck. They share a building with Galerie Isabella Czarnowska who had mounted a joint exhibition of works by Annette Messager and Alina Szapocznikow (whose works were included in the East Wing VIII exhibition with which I was involved at The Courtauld). Plus there was Veneklasen/Werner with an exhibition of paintings by Peter Saul whose works the gallery describes as ‘lurid’ – well that certainly is one way to put it!

Partying on all floors around the courtyard. Own photograph.

After dinner, by which time the monsoon had got even worse, our evening ended at Carlier Gebauer – I will confess that seeing as we were at the gallery for late night drinks, I didn’t see as much of the exhibition as I would have liked. What I did see though has ensured that this gallery is high on my list for my next trip to Berlin.

On Saturday it was time to abandon commercial art for a bit, having overdosed the night before, and we headed to Museum Island which is both an incredible and overwhelming set-up with its five mammoth museums. The current building work (I say current but I believe it’s been going on for over a decade) means the museums aren’t as well connected as they could be and quite a lot of walking is involved.

Bode Museum. Own photograph.

The Bode Museum rises from the water with two impressive copper roofed domes. It is a stunning building and the recent restoration and conservation work – both to the exterior and interior – that has been carried out on this architectural giant deserves praise. Entering into the grand circular hall, we are greeted by a majestic equestrian statue. The building is designed like a palace rather than a museum although we are used to equally grandiose buildings in London. The French classical Baroque style imposes unity and symmetry on the building. The central basilica is an architectural treat, a passageway that suggests an ecclesiastical setting. Where we might expect to find an altarpiece we find a corridor, flanked by columns and crowned with a half balcony. The Museum contains one of the world’s largest collections of sculpture and, with nearly 70 rooms, it shows sculptures and paintings ranging from the 10th to 18th centuries, Byzantine art and an unrivalled coin collection. Paintings and sculptures are not separated out into different galleries but shown alongside one another elucidating contextual and thematic relationships between works. There is a strange lack of information around the museum; we don’t learn much about what we are looking at and it’s easy to get lost but what the museum does offer is a visual feast where our eyes are invited to learn and soak up the history of art under one roof.

The basilica at the Bode Museum. Own photograph.

As you can imagine, the day disappeared quickly while we wandered around the Bode Museum but we still had enough time to head to the Neues Museum. This holds around 6,000 objects studying the European prehistoric cultures, Nordic mythology, artefacts from Troy, Roman archaeology, the Stone Age, Bronze Age and the pre-Roman Iron Age. The building suffered severe damage in World War II and an international competition was launched to find an architect to reconstruct the museum building. David Chipperfield won (no surprises there) and the building is a joy to look at. After being closed for 70 years it reopened to the public in 2009. Chipperfield has incorporated the past structure with a fresh and modern approach – this is a lesson in how to merge new and old, retaining the past spirit while imbuing a space with life and contemporary dynamism. His response is different in every room, reacting to what he found; his design is perfectly suited to this museum – in parts the old fabric is almost intact, some rooms contain fragments and some have an entirely modern feel. What Chipperfield does triumphantly is works with what is there; his hallmark has been stamped on the building yet its distinctive style still shines through.

All in all, we saw a lot of great things. I did feel some of the galleries were trying just a little too hard. They were mounting racy exhibitions of what they thought the public wanted with not enough regard to what worked coherently for their programmes. But, all in all, it was a wonderful weekend and we still headed back to the plane with smiles on our faces.